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Hello again. Progress is currently slow due to work, but I began work on a Destroyermen (tabletop) RPG a few months ago. Currently I am designing the system so as to allow for characters of all sorts of origins within the constraints of what we’ve seen thus far in the books.

The idea is to allow for players to have a large degree of freedom in forming not only what their characters are and where they came from but also who they are, and to do this in a way that results in interesting and in depth character creation without making the character creation process too arduous.

In the current prototype, characters have origins, which determine their race/ species, and/or cultural/national backgrounds where applicable. Characters also have occupations, which consist of their general roles and skill sets.

(So an origin might be something like “American”, “Imperial Japanese”, or “Republic/ Imperial German”, but a occupation might be something like a Naturalist or a Marine Rifleman.

Of course, all of that’s still a work in progress and subject to change. That being said, I wanted to ask you all for some ideas on “occupations” or specific roles you’d like to see for Humans (of any origin), Lemurians, or any of the other groups present in the books.

I’m probably gonna have to disappear from here for several months at least. It isn’t that I want to leave, since I love you all to bits, but the demands of school and extracurriculars are too much to fit stuff like this in. I hope to see all of you guys again soon!

I’ve been thinking on this for a while, but I wonder if there are any Imperial German or Austro-Hungarian groups elsewhere that aren’t aware of the Republic or are even from yet another alternate history/earth.

The likelyhood is high given what we know. Courtney’s theory that the squalls seem to be related somehow to Warfare and a large concentration of iron or steel seem to pan out so far. The groups we know of were either military units actively involved in a war or were well armed for other reasons. Given the escalation in scope and numbers as we go farther along in history I think it only makes sense that we will see more and more examples of individuals or groups who passed over in the modern era. We know that Walker and Amagi are far from the only WW2 forces to get here and the Union has even picked up on radio lost Japanese flights who have no idea they aren’t in Kansas anymore. I’m wondering when we will see the next Americans show up. At this point the US Navy and Army is all over the pacific and the record shows that there were some pretty bad storms they encountered with apparent loss of ships and aircraft. I’m holding out that a damaged fletcher or Gearing arrives and gives them the gift of radar.

As to WW1 powers, we already have the Czech legion as well as SMS Amerika. WW1 had a massive concentration of forces with an amount of hardware and suffering at such a high density I don’t think we’ve seen it since. It only stands to reason that more WW1 forces from an Earth that had it would have made their way to this one. Maybe an infantry unit on the Somme or warships at Jutland. I’d also reckon some forces from the eastern front in WW2 would have found themselves in this world. It would be really interesting how our Nazis would react to the League. They share politics but I doubt Germans from our world would tolerate a French and Italian run fascist group. That would be an odd war. Nazis versus ersatz Nazis.

Hmm. I don’t think Courtney actually linked warfare to the crossovers, except perhaps some reference to the expenditure of vast energies. (I can attest that artillery–under certain weather conditions–DOES bring rain . . . 😉 And warfare might contribute in the sense that battles do tend to cause large numbers of people and ships to congregate as well. And if his metallic theories have anything to do with it, even non belligerent vessels (such as the East Indiamen–sort of) might still cross over due to the weight of metal in their guns, fittings, fasteners, perhaps cargoes. One glaring exception: The Malay “Khonashi.” Most of the earliest transfers to the Republic as well, for that matter, unless . . . Bronze rams on galleys perhaps? Copper fasteners? Swords? ANYBODY at sea in a blue water capable craft–other than a reed boat–would have a fair amount of metal of some kind in proximity. On the vast ocean, maybe all it really takes is the metallic equivalent of a pull tab or a golden tooth. Of course, metal might not have anything to do with it at all. As I’ve said many times, however, I promise it wasn’t space aliens all along.

Maybe the “tension” between the various “earths” builds over time, so the amount of metal is only partially responsible for the transfers. The larger the amount of metal, the more likely a transfer event is possible, when the tension is lower? Or perhaps the disruption of the water surface by ships or boats will effect to transfer mechanism?

Thanks. I’ve actually been here for a good few months under this name, and a few years under another.

In any case, I think your thought on Nazis vs the League is pretty spot on. I don’t think they’d get along all too well at all for the reasons you’ve suggested, though unless the Nazis were entirely dumb or had some kind of industrial base of their own, I think they’d cooperate for at least a time with the League should they encounter it.

Honestly though, I’d be far more interested in seeing Germans from a time line where Valkyrie or one of the other attempts had succeeded. They at least may be a bit more grey, a bit more reasonable even if they aren’t good people by our or the Union and Republic’s standards.

Alternately, some representatives of a continued Wiemar Republic could be interesting if Taylor is a tad more reluctant to have representatives of WW1 floating everywhere.

By bad, I didn’t recognize your name. Depending on what world future groups come from, the possibilities are near endless. Perhaps even some that are completely foreign to us. Maybe even non human like the Gentaa. I assume Taylor doesn’t want to overuse any particular archetype or tropes so I think fascists and religious fanatics are unlikely given we already have both the League and the Doms. They have those bases covered. Of course I’m not the author so I could be completely wrong here. The only one who knows how this will end is Taylor.

Regarding continental Asia, it’s probably safe to say that any potential East Asian/Russian/Indian/Indochinese civilization is far inland – a coastal city so “close” to the Fil-pins or Lemurian Japan would’ve been noticed by now.

After being transported to a strange alternate Earth, Matt Reddy and the crew of the USS Walker have learned desperate times call for desperate measures, in the return to the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series.

Time is running out for the Grand Human and Lemurian Alliance. The longer they take to prepare for their confrontations with the reptilian Grik, the Holy Dominion, and the League of Tripoli, the stronger their enemies become. Ready or not, they have to move–or the price in blood will break them.

Matt Reddy and his battered old destroyer USS Walker lead the greatest army the humans and their Lemurian allies have ever assembled up the Zambezi toward the ancient Grik capital city. Standing against them is the largest, most dangerous force of Grik yet gathered.

On the far side of the world, General Shinya and his Army of the Sisters are finally prepared for their long-expected assault on the mysterious El Paso del Fuego. Not only is the dreaded Dominion ready and waiting for them; they’ve formed closer, more sinister ties with the fascist League of Tripoli.

Everything is on the line in both complex, grueling campaigns, and the Grand Alliance is stretched to its breaking point. Victory is the only option, whatever the cost, because there can be no second chances.

My description: CES flag
These are variations of my interpretation of the flag of the League of Tripoli. It combines elements of the flags of the Italian National Fascist Party, Spanish Falange (Spanish Nationalist Party), and the Parti Populaire Français (Vichy France).

His comment: Bobbyfisher01
The Party Populare Francais aren’t actually the Vichy French. They were a fascist party that helped the German Occupation Forces and the Milet. They existed before the Germans invaded France at the beginning of World War II, but were a minority. They were disbanded in 1945.

The PPF existed & were led by Jacques Doriot starting around 1936, before Petain established the new government at Vichy after the Germans invaded. The two parties never seemed to mix very well. Didn’t know any of this until now though. Interesting.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Popular_Party

Hi all. If one day some documents appear outside the main timeline, some may be related to the world. Here are some ideas
1) legends en cultural antics of different groups. For example what would you expect from Republic’s theater? A mix of classical greek/roman a kabuki touch?
2) Local geographic
3) Everyday’s life. Schools. Books. Where they work and what they do.
4) more details on the origin of different groups
5) stories about minor characters (for example on the life in “Japan” or the life in factories) more background on Economy

It’d also be nice to revisit some of the factions that’ve ended up on the backburner. I do realize that I’m sounding like a busted record, and that there’s so much one can cram into a single book, and that the war is important… but Aryaal/B’ambaado, New Britain, Sa’aar, the Khonashi, and all the Lost World/Star Trek “exploration” elements that introduced them? They’re being seriously neglected.

//The Republic must have a really strange mix of legends and cultural habits.//

Legends should be simple enough. Greco-Romans, Greco-Egyptians, Chinese, Arabs, Phoenicians (etc etc) each tell their own myths, then as events become stories (Legate Arminius wooing Cleopatra XIV, the Battle of the Red Gates, Khalid and the Nine Singing Gri-kakka, whatever the hell else we can make up), they all share the new ones.
Sooner or later somebody’ll definitely confuse Sun Wukong with Prometheus, among other gaffes, but I’m guessing there’s still visible lines (albeit very very blurred) between each old mythology and between old and new. If the literacy rate is high, even better for preservation.

Culture, on the other hand, is going to mix a lot more and take some weird turns. Soy sauce Grikbird liver, anybody?

I actually like this one a lot, for numerous reasons. First, it is consistent with the vague descriptions thus far given. Second, I will now reveal that the Repub aircraft insignia looks, to a certain Lemurian, “like a black, two-headed lizardbird in a white square.” Very consistent with previous description and the roundel in the center of your flag. The cross is also consistent with pre-SMS Amerika contacts of all sorts, but similar enough that Germans wouldn’t lobby for any changes. (I highly doubt a nation state as old as the Republic would change its flag to accommodate such relative newcomers). It has also been established that, though the most influential past additions were probably Lemurians, Romans (possibly multiple times, from the Republic through Eastern Empire Eras–and probably some weird mixtures in between), Chinese, Greekish Egyptians–think anybody with seagoing ships robust enough to reach the place whether we can prove they actually did it IOTL or not–many other, smaller contingents have doubtless arrived through time. It has also been established that the most recent of these (pre-Amerika) was late-mid 19th Century. In any event, there could’ve been Dutch, Portuguese, Italians, Brits, maybe even a Yankee Clipper. (Remember the description of extreme topsail schooners?) Anyway, add in the Lemurians, like I said, the Gentaa, and all the other local peoples who might’ve become part of the Republic over time and you get a REALLY mixed melting pot.
That leads me to my only real quibble with your flag. Not enough ethnic sentiments in the field. If there are going to be any, there should be more, I would think.

I’m not sure they would even have had a flag as such, before the Germans & SMS Amerika or possibly late Europeans &/or Americans. Most early peoples used symbols (i.e. Roman Eagle), or just color patterns hanging from a cross piece on a pole. The Lemurian’s didn’t have a flag at all, when first encountered, IIRC. The Republic flag may be a fairly recent innovation.
I’d be happy to add some symbols though. There would have to be a pattern of sorts, or it would start to get cluttered & messy looking.
Guys, any suggestions…no obscene Phoenician graffiti please. Matthieu, I’m looking at you.

Let’s break it down.
– The Cats were first, but they seem to have assimilated into the human factions.
– The Ptolemaic Egyptians would’ve been next, followed by the Romans, then the Ming Chinese. It’s not stated, but there may be Carthaginian and Muslim Caliphate groups too.
– But only the Europeans would think of a conventional 1:2 or 2:3 flag. The Portuguese and Dutch would’ve arrived first.
– For the sanity of everybody involved, real or fictional, let’s assume anyone crossing over afterwards (Amerika included) is subject to “you snooze, you lose.”

Upon further research, most groups can (fortunately) all be represented by a crescent and a star… perhaps a Macedonian Star, as a nod to the capital city?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_and_crescent#Classical_antiquity
The sun and moon were common Imperial symbols, so the Chinese shouldn’t complain too much. The Romans get the centrepiece and have no right to complain at all.

The Europeans will want a say too (since it was their idea). Dutch orange could probably be blended with Ming yellow, but the Portuguese like green and red; somebody’d have to talk ’em into ditching the green.

Well I think its important to note who are the sizable minorities in the republic. It is heavily implied and almost certain that many small groups have arrived over the ages but most are likely quite small and they didn’t keep much of a cohesive community or identity beyond a generation or so.

The major cultures that influence the current Republic are, the Romans, ancient Chinese, Gentaa, ancient Lemurians and Imperial Germans. I also wouldn’t under estimate the influence the Germans have. They brought with them a great deal of technology and not a small group either. Amerika nominally has a crew of 577, some were likely casualties but there are also the British POWs so those combined we are looking at around a thousand men. They are influential enough to have the monarch of the republic formally called Kaiser as well. So I doubt they are in a snooze you lose situation.

I think any flag would likely incorporate elements of the above major minorities as well as some uniquely Republic symbols as well. I could see the Imperial German colors of red black and white, with a Roman Aquila instead of a Prussian Eagle, with added Chinese and Gentaa iconography on the sides. Not sure what would be considered a symbol of the republic but they are where South Africa is located in our world and my South African has used the southern cross before. IIRC constellations are the same in that world.

“you snooze, you lose.”
Agreed, and pretty much what I said in a more refined, genteel fashion. And the Dutch and Portuguese as well since they probably would’ve only arrived in single ships. Flags have been around a long time, though, plenty of time to adopt symbols from all sorts of standards and even change many times. Maybe the square or rectangular banner only arrived three or four hundred years ago–but maybe not. Either way, still plenty of time to adopt it, particularly for naval use. But they do have special purpose pennants as well, remember? Not something to lose sleep over. That brings up the land forces. Before the reformation after the battle of Gaughala, I don’t think I ever described them, but always imagined the various legions under their own eagle. Perfectly traditional, and all sorts of other devices might’ve been added. ALSO traditional. What about after the reformation, though? I’ve given this considerable thought but don’t want to taint your speculations. I might like your ideas better than mine. Remember though, Courtney and Bekiaa’s influence cannot be understated.

I’m not sure about Egyptian crossovers, they weren’t really a sea power, more of a coastal one, unless something was blown down from the Red Sea area. If I was to make a bet on the earliest crossovers, it would be the Phoenicians. They went everywhere & had probably the first alphabet using one symbol for one sound, a major innovation at the time.
Following that, maybe the Greeks followed by the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians were much more of a sea power than the Romans at first. Maybe the Roman contingent arrived after the Carthaginians were defeated & Rome did become a sea power.
The next bunch could even be Vikings, they got into all sorts of strange places. Although no mention has been made of them.
The Chinese could have arrived essentially any time, but the Ming Dynasty has been mentioned, so they’re probably the next bunch to show up.
After that, the great explorers around Africa were first the Portuguese & then the Dutch. Back when, with Spain & Portugal at odds, the Pope divided the world between them & the Spanish got most of the New World & the Portuguese got Brazil, Africa & the routes to the East Indies. Later treaties argued who got what as far as India & Asia were concerned.
They would be followed by the British East India Company & then any Americans.
We know nothing of the Gentaa’s iconography, or history, & with them keeping to themselves, they may not want representation on a flag.
The Lemurians had no real symbols or totems except the Tree. I don’t know if the Republic population retained the reverence for that or not, but it’s a possibility.
I like Justin’s crescent & star idea, with maybe a stylized tree with branches over all the other symbols, to say who was first & to show unity.

Very good, and by “Greekish” Egyptians, I mean Ptolemaic of course. And the Greeks had some very seaworthy ships before and during this period. Actual early Egyptians can’t be written off, either, if you believe Thor Heyerdahl. or they might’ve gotten close, traveling up the Nile. Evidence suggests very early Egyptians explored really deep. A crossover occurs and they find themselves in luxuriant jungle instead of desert (with a brutal desert at their backs) and push on, perhaps at a period when the Grik have exhausted themselves in internecine warfare. Maybe a passage is briefly easier, or escape closes behind them. Not saying that’s the deal, but it would be fun to write whether they survived or not. Otherwise, sure: the Carthaginians and Phoenicians are a good bet. Might even have been the cause of some early strife in a nascent Republic when the Romans showed up. Memories were long.

Ultimately, however, it is clear that the Republic has enjoyed relative stability for quite some time. Their unity and architecture testifies to that. And of course they’ve always had a unifying threat looming over them to the north. Flags as we know them and use them today or not, their unifying symbols have probably been fairly long established. On the other hand, I see no reason not to tweak them from time to time, like adding a star to Old Glory from time to time, or the creation of the Union Jack.
Come to think of it, few national flags have remained entirely static over the last couple of hundred years, so I guess an argument could be made either way.

I fully recognize that the greatest obstacle involved in this sort of group exercise is the simple fact that I’m the only one in the world who knows all the answers, but at this point I simply can’t blow or it really would diminish your enjoyment of the story from a discovery standpoint. I think we can still make a pretty good flag, if you like. I’ve given a lot of hints. But certain absolutes, like the origin of the Gentaa, exactly who all HAS DEFINITELY contributed to the advancement of the Republic throughout time must necessarily remain obscure for now. Perhaps a combination of Lou’s, Matt’s and Justin’s proposals are closest to the mark, incorporating symbols acceptable to the most diverse constituency.
I caution you not to read too much into this however, since this inclusiveness has NOT resulted in identity politics or rabid PC (with the possible past exception of the Gentaa.) These were all symbols of UNITY, just like the stars on Old Glory used to be.

On further reflection, the Phoenicians & early Greeks & Egyptians may not be viable crossover candidates, if we’re postulating transfer squalls are attracted to ferrous metals. Those era peoples were mostly still using bronze instead of iron or steel. If we’re thinking anything metallic attracts the squalls, then all bets are off.
Are we thinking all metals or just iron & steel attract squalls?

Matt: Marginalizing a group is a good way to piss them off – just ask the League’s Germans. The Republic’s obviously not going to put in a symbol from every minority, but their general melting pot philosophy implies that they’d hardly go “Rome, Ming, Kaiserreich, end of story.”

Lou: Thanks, though I’d narrow it down to just a crescent/tree or crescent/sun if you’re going that way; three symbols on one quarter would be somewhat crowded.

Courtney’s theory is still just a theory; it could be conducting metals rather than just magnetic ones, which means all the bronze/copper/silver on a Classical period ship would work too. And then there’s speculation of Gri-kakka and “dragons” crossing over to our time, so it might not be metal-related at all.

At any rate, Ptolemaic Greeks have been mentioned before – and the capital being Alex-aandra rather than Heliopolis points to Cleopatra’s Egypt rather than Ramses’.

Mr. Anderson: Not saying early Egyptians couldn’t have made to South Africa and survived, but the various kingdoms’ war-making ability more or less peaked at Kadesh and stayed there for the next few millennia. The pre-Walker Lemurians at least had superior tech and an ocean in the way.

@Justin. I’m not arguing for marginalizing anyone. What I am saying is that large scale passages of homogeneous groups is probably rare and most who find themselves in the republic were small contingents. A fishing vessel, a hunting party, a surveying expedition etc. These groups are so small in number that they are unlikely to form a strong cultural identity within the republic and were likely fully assimilated within a few generations. We know of a few big ones and while Taylor says they aren’t the only big ones we know that they were large and influential enough to keep some form of identity and it had a major effect on the culture of the republic. In other words there’s no point in adding a symbol to a group nobody identifies with anymore.

@Taylor. Definitely no identity politics. The republic couldn’t function the way it does if it did. I’m really curious to see who is also a major influence besides the ones we already know about. I’m also a fan of Bradford’s theory that the gentaa aren’t some hybrid but a completely different species from another earth.

Charles, true, they traded with Punt, but it was for them a long & hazardous trip. Most scholars put Punt at the base of the Red Sea area. One of their ships or expeditions may have been transferred, but I think it’s doubtful they wound up as far south as the Repbulic, given the sea born dangers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt#/media/File:Land_of_Punt.png

Matt: Not necessarily identity politics, but definitely more than flat-out absorption.

The Republic seems to have a melting pot resembling Singapore’s; rather than one or two founding ethnicity/cultures that all the others are centred around, they’re all equally respected. SG’s flag is designed in a similar fashion.

So the Big Three civs definitely get dibs, but IMO even if some of the small factions have disappeared, they probably get flag space, acknowledging their role in the Republic’s history. Even if it’s a tree or star or moon and they all have to share it.
Maybe one star per civ, if that’s not too similar to the American or Union flags.

Excellent! Thinking about that:
– the Q in SPQR should go under R (they had a strange tradition about that)
– I would expect Romans not to have asked for SPQR to be on the flag: I would have expected them to have it written on a wooden pole. We can also expect the flag not be carried this way by legions:

Very good points, Matthieu, and Legionary standard might hang down from a crosspiece under a distinctive device and possibly even vary slightly themselves from one legion to another–besides just the legionary number. Another cool exercise. So far we have just focused on the naval flag that might well HAVE been most influenced by the German or 19th century contingents.

The legion’s standards would likely be close to the Roman style given the obvious influence in the design and structure of the army. They can probably draw their lineage back to the Roman system of professional soldiering.

As for the naval ensign I think the British and German passengers on Amerika probably had the greatest influence on that. So a European style naval ensign would make sense.

I am really enjoying this conversation and while I have no artistic ability I must say seeing Lou’s attempts at representing these conversations helps me to visualize what people are trying to say.

I wonder though, if opening up the flag and spreading the symbols around would be better than ‘smashing/stuffing’ them into one corner. You’ve got all this activity in one place and nothing going on elsewhere.

Doug’s right in one way though. That’s about the limit of stuff that can be stuffed into that quadrant with out it becoming to busy. I’m also undecided on Matthieu’s findings that the Romans preferred dropping the Q below the rest of the letters. After better than 1,000 years, they may have forgotten or discarded the practice, or not. I’ll have to see how it looks. Opinions on that?

Looks great Lou. About the only thing about it that I haven’t described or implied (here or in the books) is the yellow field–and its contents have been a group effort between all of us. (Much as I respect Matthieu’s position on historical heraldry, such on THIS world cannot be seen as a definitive guide and the existence of the Royal French flag does tend to subvert the term “never,” in any event, though I support efforts to provide a sharper outline contrast.
Ultimately, the FLAVOR of the field’s contents, based on the nature of the Republic and its tendency toward inclusion–as well as stylized art (don’t forget Amerika’s final “war palace” paint scheme)–are firmly established and wholly consistent. If the opportunity ever arises for me to describe this flag in detail, do I have your permission to do so? Is everybody satisfied with it?

Additionally, though it hasn’t appeared in print yet, I told Charles that the Repub aircraft insignia will be described (by a certain Lemurian) as looking like a “blaack, two-headed lizardbird in a white square.” (This, like the Cantets, obviously WAS influenced by the Germans) The “lizardbird” aspect of the impression it made could’ve been influenced by the stylized representation of the two-headed eagle–or maybe not. There ARE actual birds in this world, but no eagles have been described. Absent them, a lizardbird might make for a more intimidating substitute unless there was an aversion to their described behavior. And maybe they don’t all act that way? (To be clear, I’ve always considered eagles to be “sport model buzzards” compared to hawks, particularly the majestic red-tailed hawk which I have never seen on carrion). But perhaps there is something perceived as a “noble” lizardbird? Hell, maybe there’s one with two heads!

//If the opportunity ever arises for me to describe this flag in detail, do I have your permission to do so?//

Hell yes! If I need to sign anything, let me know, if not, take the ball & run Forrest!

Any art work I do related to the DDmen, I acknowledge as inspired by your work & is yours for the asking, the 1944 Walker, & the USS Gray are done from the books descriptions also. The rest are modifications & guesses, but you can have them as well.

Lou: I’d get rid of the Mandarin/Latin script, but the rest looks great! Much better than anything the rest of us (save Nestor) have come up with.

Mr. Anderson: If we’re looking for a “noble” pterosaur, there’s bound to be some kind of Quetzalcoatlus analogue in this version of South Africa.
Or you could make one up. So long as it’s bigger than most others (Haast’s-sized?), intelligent, and sufficiently majestic (curved beak? head crest?), the humans would’ve probably gone “yeah, that’s an eagle.”

Thanks Lou. I’ll put you in the acks again–as if I don’t try to include everyone who comments here anyway. You guys help more than you know, sometimes in weird, seemingly unrelated ways. (NOT in ways Matthieu might immediately suggest, obviously).
Lou, as to your pic of the Gray, have you seen the silhouette in the book? Very similar, but you’ll note some subtle (and a few not so subtle) differences, mostly in the placement and proportions of things. I did my own more detailed rendering–(not in your class)–before I filled it all in, but would you care to take a crack at reconciling those differences?
As to eagles, I’ve seen them snatch fish many times. It is inspiring. The main reason for the “sport model buzzard” crack is that I’ve also seen them on long-dead critters. Not really a judgement, I swear. They do what they have to. Hawks amaze me though. I’ve seen them snatch doves going eighty out of the sky. Once–I swear–I found one caught in a #4 trap by a claw. Couldn’t shoot it, couldn’t leave it. I slowly eased down, depressed the springs, and MOVED its foot out of the trap. That thing could’ve shredded me. Instead it just looked at me the whole time, flew up on a limb when it was free and looked at me a while longer before finally flying away. A genuinely spiritual moment. So . . . I kind of like hawks.

I could see how that would make an impression alright! They’re both big birds. Here’s two on some lady’s back deck. I was thinking the bird was sizing up it’s next meal & the cat wasn’t falling for it.https://www.facebook.com/N8vBeauties/videos/1064560933579716/
I’ll see what I can do reconciling the silhouette with my Gray drawing. I have a rough time blowing them up & getting the detail blurred.

“Much as I respect Matthieu’s position on historical heraldry, such on THIS world cannot be seen as a definitive guide and the existence of the Royal French flag does tend to subvert the term “never,” in any event, though I support efforts to provide a sharper outline contrast”

You are right on the topic. Contrast was needed and the two single exceptions to the general rule were the French Royal flag “for royal family member aboard ships” as the regular flag was white and, of course, for the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

You guys help more than you know, sometimes in weird, seemingly unrelated ways. (NOT in ways Matthieu might immediately suggest, obviously)”

Something might be interesting to explore (and would be interesting for a “companion book”: heraldry is related to legends. But we don’t really know legends and cultures of the different groups. The Republic must have a really strange mix of legends and cultural habits.

2. What is that on the aft deck house forward of the #3 5.5″ DP mount with two prongs sticking out of it, aft con?

3. The book Devil’s Due says the 5.5s are directed by a copy of Amagi’s secondary directors. There doesn’t seem to be one on the silhouette. Or is it the thingy on the first platform above the bridge? If not, do you want one on the pilot house?

//Something might be interesting to explore (and would be interesting for a “companion book”: heraldry is related to legends. But we don’t really know legends and cultures of the different groups. The Republic must have a really strange mix of legends and cultural habits// No kidding, Matthieu.

Hey Lou. Yeah, they’re open-backed splinter shields, not true armored gunhouses as are usually associated with the term “turret.” Then again, even the fully enclosed turrets on a Fletcher weren’t exactly armored. They’d keep the spray off you but that’s about it.

//What is that on the aft deck house forward of the #3 5.5″ DP mount with two prongs sticking out of it, aft con?//

Yes. Pardon how crude everything is. I drew it in 300dpi but things reduced that small . . . a 5.5″ gun is only a pixel thick!

//Devil’s Due says the 5.5s are directed by a copy of Amagi’s secondary directors. There doesn’t seem to be one on the silhouette. Or is it the thingy on the first platform above the bridge? If not, do you want one on the pilot house?//

Ah . . . actually, yeah, it should be on top of the pilothouse. I literally just forgot to put it there. Ha!

There’s one or two more from the same lady. The other one I saw the eagle is just sitting there looking all majestic & the cat’s around the side railing keeping an eye on it. Nothing much happens though. Just cool that a couple of huge birds would just use her back porch as a perch. The lady’s handle is Pam Aus. Apparently she’s done a few of these.https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Cats+and+Bald+Eagles&FORM=HDRSC3

My wife’s bloated cat would die of a heart attack–or die jumping off the ledge. His name is “Stupid” for a reason (he got called that so much he started answering to it) but he watched every other kitten in his litter get massacred by owls and he’s terrified of big birds. I saw him trying to heave his fat carcass up a tree one time and a buzzard flew over a couple of hundred feet up. That was enough. Its SHADOW was enough. He just let go, plummeted to the ground, and bolted under a bench under the workshop awning. I found him the next day, hiding in the engine compartment of my old ’69 Chevy. To this day, if he ever goes outside, he watches the sky and tries to creep around under things. Probably wind up getting bit by a snake.

If he keeps hiding in engine bays, he’s not long for this world. When I was in Korea, we came out of our shop on day, hopped into our van to do a comm install. When we started her up it made a funny noise & then smoothed out, but when we went to turn, the power steering was gone. So we pop the hood & discover the fan, belts & pulleys had essentially gutted a cat, which popped the belts off the pulleys to the power steering, A/C & alternator.

I’ve had mice crawl up inside motor control starters and switchgear and get electrocuted which causes them to blow their guts all over the enclosure. It was such a problem that we started specifying NEMA 4 enclosures, which are proof against a fire hose to keep them out instead of NEMA 1 indoor enclosures. I’ve also seen snakes get in transformers, where the 34.5kv phase to phase does a number on them.

Stupid hasn’t crawled up in a motor since. (He’s scared of engines too). Not totally stupid in some ways. That said, I’ve had to clean cats, squirrels, racoons, snakes, opossums–just about everything you can imagine that will fit–out of engine compartments over the years. Ha! This discussion sure took a gruesome turn!

I’m no flag expert, but just seems to me that as engagement distances increase, the flag designs seemed to become simpler and simpler. It’s more apparent with aircraft roundels — look at what the RAF and RAAF went to in in the Pacific in the later days of WW2– not to mention invasion stripes. Nowadays flags seem to be more ceremonial; seems to make more sense to have your infantry toting another few MANPADS or anti-armor missles.

Standard bearers in old style ground combat usually had very short life spans. Everyone was after the flag, banner or standard. It’s capture would demoralize the troops, as they would begin to think their leaders had been, killed, captured or overrun. It’s capture would prevent an enemy from using it as a rallying point.

Apparently it was considered to be a great honor to carry the unit’s standard or banner. Often it was the younger troops, I guess they’re more gullible than the older soldiers who’d watched other bearers get killed.

The first few covers weren’t too bad; Distant Thunder actually didn’t have any Grikbirds or snarky-looking alligatorsaurs (well, Walker WAS in drydock)and I guess the invisible gunners were down at the Busted Screw. Rereading ROB; Taylor, this is your best effort to date. More depth to the Grik characters a welcome addition.

Taylor Anderson posted the title of Destroyermen 14, “PASS OF FIRE,” and the cover art on his Facebook page. I copied the art and description and linked to the FB post here for those who cannot view Facebook:

Nice, very dramatic. I was under the impression the Leone class Esploratori had four twin 4.7″ mounts not four singles. Also I don’t think the navy clan frigates & DDs would even have spirit sails, much less use them in combat & most sailing navies would furl their courses as a fire hazard before battle. On the other claw, it saves the artiste from all that pesky detail work.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone-class_destroyer

A lot of people have asked me why I don’t do a “Destroyermen Companion,” and I’ll confess it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Only thing is, my agent assures me “they’ll never buy it. Nobody is buying companions right now.” Ok, that’s not really my concern. I think it would be cool if it was just “out there,” available for free download. Kind of like the WIKI but more focused and easy to reference. My agent thought THAT was a great idea, particularly if it featured a brief synopsis of each book, all the maps and artwork associated with them, and maybe some Courtney-style narrative from time to time. I thought about it some more and asked him “So, if it’s free . . . why can’t I get fans to help build it? Contribute art of their own (subject to review, like we’ve done before) and stuff like that?” Guess what? He thought that was a good idea too.
Contributors still couldn’t do “fan-fic” for the companion/series synopsis I envision (yet, at least, since the series is still ongoing) but they could contribute original art, like I said, and imaginative details that would become canon–as long as they were willing to sign a contract releasing rights, etc. (It would be free, after all), but I’d make sure they got credit for contributing so they WOULD be “e-published.” Sort of. Anyway–and before I put this idea up anywhere else–what do you guys think?
This isn’t a moneymaking scheme, it’s a way for the D-Men community to help put things in order, maybe flesh things out, and get involved if they want to. A collaborative labor of love for the story. That’s how I see it, anyway.

The WIKI is both easy and hard to find things in first there is a search function that may or may not find pages for you quickly. Spelling counts, and like a dictionary if you can’t get the first few letters correct you are done.

The closest thing to an index is the categories file. Here is a link to the Destroyermen Wikia category file:

If you are on the Wiki go to move the pointer to Community when the pop up menu appears below left click on Special:Categories.

There are 336 named characters in the books only a few of these have full biographies in the books. This might give you an idea of the amount of data. The Wiki program allows you to count pages in each category, thus I can tell you of the 336 named characters 22 are male Grik or only 6.5% of named characters are Grik males.

We can use help on the Wiki too, and it might prevent duplicated effort.

Indeed, but I don’t see why the WIKI and Companion/Synopsis can’t compliment each other. For example, contributors might fill in some of the named character biographies. This would almost REQUIRE cross-referencing the WIKI–and then the results could be posted there as well. “Courtney” could describe a number of different types of lizardbirds, not just the one I’ve drawn, and somebody could draw some more. The list of possibilities is endless, and we could establish a committee of judges who’d determine which submissions can be accepted as “canon.” And–again–since it would be downloadable for free, everything included in this e-volume would be available for inclusion in the WIKI.
The advantage I (and my agent) see to this is the structure and intimate availability.
The structure, as I said, would be in the form of a handful of pages for each book, outlining the events that take place–no heavy detail there–accompanied by relevant maps and artwork. These would basically be more expanded (more story descriptive)versions of the entries on my website–and the WIKI too. This would not only serve to bring people starting in the middle up to speed, it would give them instant access to visuals that might enhance their reading pleasure. The “new” info would come as an appendix that could be as long as we want it, either in the form of excerpts and illustrations from “Courtney’s” book, or a collection of his and other “articles.” That’s also where lists of characters, technical drawings, ships and their histories, etc. might be included.
The prime advantage to all this would be that a person finishing one of the books on Kindle would then be directed to the free “companion/synopsis” that they could immediately download and also read on their Kindle. They would, of course, also be directed to the WIKI, the Website, and the Association pages. It is a convenience that would benefit readers AND the WIKI.

I’m probably going to do this. The problem I face is a lack of TIME to do it within a reasonable period of time, and frankly, I thought it would be an opportunity to let many people who’ve expressed a desire to contribute in constructive, imaginative ways, to do so.
Those contributors wouldn’t be compensated directly, of course, but they would get satisfaction and recognition.

Just an idea, like I said. If you guys don’t like it I won’t suggest it more publicly. I WILL probably do it myself, however, but it’ll take a whole lot longer and it won’t be as fun.

It’s a good idea. You raise a lot of questions and obviously we need to discuss about the potential content and what’s feasible. For example you could create cannon global maps and people would be able to draw custom ones to illustrate a given action (using parts of the global and official map).

I would imagine something like Courtney’s encyclopedia. The main advantage is that a large number of unrelated articles is relevant in such a book.

The project should be technically well defined as it needs to take into consideration constraints:
– an ebook is not a wiki and is not designed to accept too many hyperlinks (it slows down a lot readers). Something like a wiki is just not going to work (unless it’s just a link to a website/wiki)
– The most common ebook format is the “epub”. The Amazon Kindle is a proprietary format. If you don’t have a Kindle you just can’t open Amazon files.
– Readers often have issues with maps (as they have not need designed for that). Tablets are much more efficient for that.

PDF is one way to go. Most forms are searchable. Or possibly a collection of PDF’s that can be bundled. Though someone would have to “own” the/a pdf as the editor to keep it up to date. We used to do design standards this way and update each section as required. Each section or the whole could be downloaded. The master pdf/pdfs could reside somewhere in the clud.

Alternatively, you could have a google document that is shared amongst the editors and set it so that anyone with the link can view it. Then you could put the link on this website or wherever you think it should be, and people can access it there. Granted, it may not be particularly mobile friendly, as large documents tend to lag out on mobile in my experience(although I was trying to edit the document at the time), so that’s a consideration.

I think a PDF is a better idea. However this ends up it will be a collection of both text and a fair number of images. and PDF works well to that. The extra functionality the offer is useful too and you don’t run into the portability problems of various ebook formats. Everything supports PDF so anyone can read it. PDFs also lend themselves to being updated easily. Releasing a companion ebook right now wouldn’t make sense because the series is ongoing and it would lose value fairly quickly. Trying to get Amazon, Google or whoever to update their copy of the ebook every time we add content would be a real pain. But a PDF hosted on this site would be trivial for Taylor to update. Just replace the file with the newer version on the web server. So assuming nobody wants to wait until the series is done to make this then going with a PDF with accurately tracked version history seems to me the best way to go about it.

Layout wise, something like an RPG manual would probably work. Text outlining the specific topic with artwork interspersed to help visualize the subject. Something like the DnD Player’s handbook. Just instead of a game manual, its a book series companion.

Just coming out from under my rock then I bump into this. So it happens, just a couple of weeks ago I had started on the first of a new format of D-Men character and specification concept sheets that I was planning to post on DeviantArt. Started to take select drawings from my sketchbooks, ink and color them and include them along brief descriptive paragraphs. I was to combine info from Taylor’s own character and spec lists in the books, Charles’ Wiki and my own notes into the layout.

I wasn’t planning on advertising this until I had finished and posted the first piece but what Taylor just outlined above is very close to what I had dancing in my head for quite some time so I couldn’t help spilling the beans!

I agree, Charles’ Wiki can be used as the springboard for this so there’s no need to start from scratch. I’ve already used it as reference for details in my drawings and in exchange he’s included my art in the Wiki. There’s already tons of content available that serves as reference for anyone who would like to contribute art and copy for it.

As for myself, I happen to share the same problem as Taylor: lack of TIME to crank out stuff as often as I’d like to! But perhaps a joint effort can help make things a bit more manageable, starting with providing input on layout and content on the Wiki as per Charles, and making it easier to navigate and reference.

Spent the last 2 weeks listening to the 1st 5 books on YouTube. They are very good even if the 15 + hours per book does cause a long wait to finish
I never realized how much I missed reading instead of listening. Must say though I think that a few minor voice changes could help and the one time they mentioned a “hissing” laugh for the grik it did not sound that way but it is still very good. Loved them. And even my wife loved them and she hates war stories (except john Wayne).

I had also forgotten about the lizzard frogs actually helping laney weld the plates back on the santy cat. I still think the lizard frogs would be good for 0ne or more stories such an when the original crew abbandoned her. The implications were that the frogs were rempering the original crew and were sorry for attacking them when they came back.

Sorry Don, but you do understand that whoever was doing that was stealing, right? They upload the audios and monetize their sites and then THEY get paid based on how many people listen to them. I and Bill Dufris, who put so much time and effort into reading them in such an entertaining manner, get nothing. The bad thing is, whoever did it will probably just put them up again somewhere else. Worse–and this boggles my mind–I and the audio company will probably get assailed for complaining.

RIVER OF BONES SPOILERS
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There’s been a whole lot of discussion about how to use the Type XIB, but not much about her occupants. Technically, they are still enemy combatants; do any of the crew have reasons to sabotage the Allies or tip off the League? Do they have an OVRA agent onboard?

I’d suggest that any vetted personnel get sent to the already partially-Germanized Republic; after a few months’ paid probation, full citizenship and benefits (right to own property, vote, marry, etc etc). Give them a life beyond the U-Boat and a Sudenreich to fight for, and they’ll likely pressure other League Germans to defect as well.

Agreed. They need time to be vetted but it would also be good for their morale and willingness to work if they had time off. Life on a diesel boat is unpleasant and being able to stretch one’s legs and at least experience something sort of like home would be nice.

In the long term using them on the front lines is pretty much out of the question. The personal risk if the League ever got their hands on them would be far too great. However they would be very useful in the Union’s shipbuilding and weapons industries. That U-boat has much better torpedoes than anything the Union can build and while everyone seems to have a bad taste in their mouths over subs a long range U-boat is a good basis for making new ones. The intel gathering abilities of submarines is impressive not to mention the strategic advantages of attacking shipping. And even if they don’t take advantage of that. There is still the sonar, torpedoes, batteries etc which can all be useful when studied.

It’s not reluctance so much as perceived impracticality. As Lou and Alexey have observed, U-Boats require batteries/motors, CO2 scrubbers, vents, valves, high-quality steel for the pressure hull, and so on… not to mention a much higher degree of welding experience than the Union has right now.

So with S-19 at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and her crew either dead or busy elsewhere, the previous consensus was that it’d take a while to R&D even a Plunger. Of course, a full complement of Das Boot guys and a functioning XIB cruiser changes that equation.

They currently have the active League codes that will be very useful until changed. I doubt there is an OVRA agent among the Germans, Their best bet to start a German enclave might be Australia their skills would be welcome and the abundant resources. Marine Diesel engines would be useful for smaller craft and the fuel efficiency will expand cruising range, besides lowering lag time from start up to ability to move, about eight hours with a steam system but almost instantaneous with a diesel engine. The Germans did not appear to need much convincing to leave the league.

Consider this; they have a vessel impervioous to the Dark, that can remain on patrol at the Cape for weeks on end. With air support from SW Africa, they can scout up and down the west coast, easily destroy any Dom or Grik ship, and rotate crews ashore to support torpedo workshops and shipbuilding. Or, trips to see the Nussies.

Read up on HMS Graf, a real world situation to the one that has fallen in to the Union’s hands. TLDR; the Royal Navy captured a fully functional Type VII Uboat early in the war. After tests and examinations they commissioned her as the HMS Graf. She didn’t serve for long because they simply didn’t have the spares to keep her operational.

Before Baklpaan became industrialized that was also a major problem for Walker, keeping her running with spares and ammunition. Torpedoes are a lot more complicated than artillery shells and the G7a’s and G7e’s the Uboat has are quite a bit more advanced than the current Union designs, which may or may not even be compatible with U-boat tubes. So for a time at least she will only have the fish she came with.

I think its biggest benefit right now is as a study platform. Its a good sub with a crew who know her well. That will be a great way to improve a lot of Union technologies. She will serve much better in that regard than being worn ragged in a few months with no spares.

The future fate of the uboat will ultimatly fall into the” Do we keep her tech or throw her away”. They threw away their first sub since they were not cacable of maintaining her and knew it so decided that her use as a torpedo boat and gun platform was the best usage for her. I doubt that they will do the same with this one. It is not obvious what plant that taylor has for her under the conditions of surrender. She will not be used against the league as that will break the surrender terms. I suspect that taylor won’t write anything that would backstab any honorable action by either side. I suspect if their is any action using the sub it will be in the new world and the pass of fire and using replacement torpedos in about a year. That means about 3 or more books since he is getting about 2 to 4 months per book.

Taylor:
Thanks again for another exciting Barnburner of a read!
ROB was everything I could’ve expected and more.
Spoilers Maybe!?

Deja Flew all over again!
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeevTbc-LT0
The Royal Guardsman
Right now, I am relishing and totally enjoying the fierce and raging debate on World War I that you guys have accidently stumbled into and are now having.
Your discussion page and site is so totally Avant Gard and Leading Edge!
Some other additional lines of inquiry to consider
1. Divvying up the spoils of World War I among incestuous world leaders based on the historically precedent Imperialism model was and could not ever be satisfactorily addressed.
Inevitably there are going to be more shortchanged losers than actual winners created.
2. World War I was also a Robber Baron War fought with that era’s
own cutting edge of human ingenuity, innovation and invention.
Stifled,stunted and disjointed social,cultural economic and political and legal institutions saturated and infected the nation states and global empires of that time.

“Old Fuds, Young Studs and Lieutenant Commanders”

Battleships are title B,
That’s Lesson One in Strategy,
They are the backbone of the Fleet
Their fighting power can’t be beat.
They dominate the raging Main,
While swinging around the anchor chain,
And bravely guard your home and mine,
While anchored out there all in line….
Now Lesson Two in strategy–
Our subs and planes are title C.
Just send them out on any mission,
And win your battles by attrition.
Where’er you send the subs or planes,
You’re bound to chalk up lots of gains–
And losses, too, but what the hell,
Who cares about their personnel?
For planes are chauffeured by young studs,
While Lieutenant Commanders run the subs.
-Richard Vogue
Lieutenant Commander, USN

Because the standard Navy remedy for fixing any
piece of faulty machinery is,
“First try tapping it with a monkey wrench.”
“Then see what happens next.”

What will CINCAF Reddy do with a newly acquired Type XIB U-Boat?
Are the Alliance torpedoes even compatible with, or can they be
made to be retrofitted for immediate use by the U-112?
What are possible advantages disadvantages (outside of buying Time)
to having the El Paso del Fugo passage permanently Closed.

Pretty cool. I won’t go into how impractical they were here due to their rarity and how hard they were to feed, but in general they weren’t bad. Obviously quicker to load and fire than a muzzleloader as long as the breech didn’t stick, but I imagine bore erosion was worse than for a 3″ Ordnance rifle, for example, possibly reducing the service life. Honestly, I don’t really know enough about them from a practical standpoint. Never played with one. I can argue that the 3″ was better than the Parrot for lots of reasons I’ve SEEN, but don’t feel competent to make a proper comparison to a Whitworth. The specs on them aren’t really any more impressive than a 3″ except for rate of fire and the 3″ was probably better at anti-infantry from and exploding shell, even canister standpoint (though all rifles suck with canister). Yet in a clinch, under fire with your crew dropping, that “load it from behind, rapid fire” aspect might make all the difference. Especially in a line of sight artillery duel.

I suggest that the PB5-Ds could provide air support for the Grik campaign using river and lake runways with supply boats rather than trucks bringing in supplies rather than land based runways with multiengine bombers. The Grik have long range rockets, muzzle loading cannon, and airships, Alliance four inch fifty’s have both rockets and cannon out ranged, and the P1-Ds will sweep the skies. Launching Grik piloted Bombs with rockets suggested in ROB epilog? Remember all those pics of the USA’s early rocket failures? So do the Grik or the Japanese have even one rocket scientist? There may be a Republic Monitor joining the Zambezi fleet with 8″ guns. My guess is the alliance will use tanks and river based assets to enfilade both ends of a Grik trench with fire prior to alliance attacks on the trench ending in the Alliance moving foreword. Another strategy would be to leap frog the Grik trenches with further amphibious landings. What Taylor will do is anyone’s guess. However if the Grik lose New Sofesshk their industrial capacity will suffer.

I think the tactic with the tanks could work on the tactical level, but not the strategic level since there’s what, 10 tanks in the whole union? If they had more they could do the strategy over the whole front, but with only 10 I think they can do it once or twice before they lose too many to be worth it. I do think that advancing along the river is a good idea since they can have easy naval gunfire support.

Less than a dozen tanks means the strategic level is nonexistent. In order for a front-wide attack, they’d have to spread out the armour until they’re left with one/two per battalion like the French, and we all know how that went.

You’re going on the assumption that they’ll only ever have eight tanks, though – remember, the six replacements came just a month or so after Zanzibar. Definitely not enough for a blitzkrieg, but enough to sustain one shock unit through the whole Sofesshk campaign.

But why would they do that? They come from 1941 and all their experience show that they need to concentrate tanks.

Tanks right now are a perfect shock weapon as Griks just don’t know how to fight against them. Their artillery is not designed to shoot at them, they don’t know which weapon they can carry, what’s their armor and so on.

They are right now the perfect weapon to cross a no man’s land and generate a Grik rout. At the tactical level they ensure some victories. At the operational level Griks will face a new potential problem as they will have to design new tactics to fight them while them as they don’t know how many will appear.

Right now those tanks can do exactly what Fueller and Etiennes planned: to cross the no man’s land and hammer to death Grik’s artillery crews. Without this cover, Griks (as they don’t have MG) are just dead meat.

They can also hold any important location… as long as they remain supported.

The total impulse has to be large enough, which depends on the specific impulse of the propellant used in the rocket. The higher the specific impulse the less mass of propellant is required to achieve the total impulse needed. The specific impulse of black powder is low compared to using mono-atomic hydrogen as the reductant and liquid fluorine as the oxidizer. Of course using a cryogenic liquid bi-propellant introduces a lot more complications than a solid mono-propellant. (n.b. black powder is not technically a mono-propellant as its is a mechanical mixture of two reductants and a single oxidizer.) What is this question in response to?

Just for reference, model model rocket engines which are also black powder motors probably not all that different in principle to a Grik type rocket have an Isp between 50 and 100 seconds. Not very good at all. Proper modern solid fuel rockets have Isp somewhere in the mid 200s and liquid fuel can go up to the mid 400s.

I’m back, and have two questions. Firstly, what is this about a network and what manner of tomfethery has been done with it? Second, what is the training for the Union’s marines like? I spent the first week of summer vacation on a field trip to Parris Island with the MCJROTC unit I’m in, and I’m curious as to how similar cat training is to that of Parris Island. Is there a DI school for the cats? How is it run? I assume they won’t have the DI hats, since if I recall correctly those were a postwar thing.
Also I guess the tank design first seen in…Devil’s Due, right? Anyway, I guess that tank design is now in production. When do we get to see its information in the back of the book, or at least get a name for it?

Welcome back General, the tanks are introduced in Blood in the Water the hardback page 60 gives this description These are approximately 4.8 meters long (16 feet), 3 meters (10 feet) wide and are armored against small arms and light artillery. They are armed with a pair of side mounted machine guns in sponsons. Due to lack of plate steel only four are built. Greg Letts assigns them to the Konoshi.

In Devil’s Due chapter 20 pages 333-334 two are lost.

In River of Bones Allen Letts manages to get six more made for a total of eight for the invasion of Africa.

I’ve only seen that the DIs and instructors are wounded troops who can no longer be in the front lines missing arms or legs.

That’s not unusual in any military. The upper echelon’s have been trained to fight one way throughout their careers & have difficulty accepting the new realities, while the younger officers are still flexible in thought. The British were the same way & lost a generation of men uselessly charging machine guns across open fields. I think today’s militaries are being trained to accept change as a part of warfare now, although there is still resistance to it. For instance the entrenched generals in the USAF were bitterly opposed to drones at first, then against armed drones because they were not piloted, but progress grinds on & many of those are now retired & the new generation is more accepting of reality.

There is a great deal of British triumphalism in this article. The French cannon and machine guns were made with American steel. The French steel plants were overrun by the Germans in the several months of the Great War. Half of all smokeless powder used by the British was produced in America. The US Army was well aware of the changes in tactics during the war, the primary instructors of the US Army were French Chassures Alpines, some of Frances best troops. Almost all of the shells fired on the Western Front from 1915 were made in the US. By the time of the Armistice the US Army had two million men in France, which meant that it was more powerful than either the French or British Army. There is no way the Allies could have won without either the US economy or the US Army. The Meuse-Argonne offensive was what broke the back of the German Army. The British today maintain that they won the war almost single-handed with minimal help from anybody else. They sure didn’t want to admit that the US Army in in 3 months did what they couldn’t do in 4 years. By 1918 the French and British were out of men. There was no way they were going to win alone against the Germans. The Germans killed the French and British at far faster rates than they killed the Germans. The British and French Generals lied about the causality ratios all the way through the war to their governments. The Allies had 1,922,727 dead on the western front versus 669,263 Germans. That’s around a 3 to 1 ratio. Total Allied casualties (dead, wounded, missing were 5,558,400 versus 1,214,327, almost 5 to 1.

“Almost all of the shells fired on the Western Front from 1915 were made in the US”

Wrong. For example French DAILY production was 175.000 75mm shells and 52.000 155mm in 1917. Many were imported but it was far from “almost all”.

” By the time of the Armistice the US Army had two million men in France, which meant that it was more powerful than either the French or British Army”

Wrong. Both of those armies were far larger.

“There is no way the Allies could have won without either the US economy or the US Army”

Probably for the first part of the sentence. Maybe for the second part but it’s far from sure.

” The Meuse-Argonne offensive was what broke the back of the German Army”

ROLF! This offensive is well known to be a local and secundary operation against a limited number of divisions. Troops were really courageous but the faulty staffwork (related to a huge lack of experience) leaded to massive jams.

“They sure didn’t want to admit that the US Army in in 3 months did what they couldn’t do in 4 years”

Something which is a complete nonsense.

“The British and French Generals lied about the causality ratios all the way through the war to their governments”

Wrong. Numbers were available and even discussed in France in the senate. For UK I don’t know.

What’s true is that the fact that US forces were coming made Germans attack in spring as time was running out. Their first attack was a massive victory. The second one was a victory. Allied adapted, light FT17 tanks appeared. The third one was a failure. At that time the first US division reached the line. The fourth one was a complete disaster: Germans lost their best troops during the first attacks and were now facing allies with tanks and enhanced tactics. Then (in August) a lot of US troops reached the front.

At the same time allies won in Italy, Turkey, Serbia and so on. Without the help of any US force.

No. What’s true is that the victory came from a combination of factors. None is decisive by itself. You can like many: morale from German occupation units in the East, broken front in Palestine, Serbian attack, Austria-Hungary in disarray, US involvement morale boost, allied tanks and so on.

What’s true is that US forces reaching the front had a significance: on the long run (1919), Germany was doomed and its allies were going to surrender. So they had to win in early 1918 or never. They misunderstood the situation and targeted English forces thinking that a tactical victory was going to give them a strategic victory.

If you want to find the most two decisive moments on 1918, they are probably:
– the first US divisions in the line. Interestingly enough, US history was also changed later then the Black divisions “given” by the US to France reached the front. They discovered a country without segregation where they were just soldiers as white people. I do not say that there were no racism, but on the front line and behind they were seen as “normal” soldiers and it changed many things.

– the German failure on July the 15th. Few people know it but it’s the most decisive defensive battle that Year. Until that day, German Strormtrupper were able to penetrate allied lines. That day the commander decided to evacuate the first line and to create stronpoints between the first and second line. Germans captured the front line but all their artillery barrage was useless and they were surprised in the open between the two lines by artillery and enfiladed fire from those strongpoints. For the first time infiltration tactics failed and losses were 40.000 / 5.000 . It was the last German offensive.

But Matthieu, in your effort to re-direct to the big picture, you leave out some pertinent details, as well as objective big picture analysis. One detail that cannot be ignored is the French mutiny. I doubt the Germans would’ve instantly won the war if they’d discovered it in time, but they could’ve just waltzed through the line. I believe they would’ve been stopped since there wouldn’t–couldn’t– have been any weight behind such an opportunistic breakthrough, but imagine the FURTHER morale hit this would’ve caused. As it was, the French were finished with offensives and Pétain was content to wait for the deployment of the AEF AND the Renault tanks before he would resume. This strategy was sanctioned by Clemenceau and communicated to Wilson.

//At the same time allies won in Italy, Turkey, Serbia and so on. Without the help of any US force//

Nonsense.

ALL planning and allocation of troops and resources at this stage on both sides was influenced by the impending arrival of US forces on the Western Front. Did US forces directly engage in those places? No, other than perhaps an observer or two. But were the Allies better able to support them? Yes. Were the enemy? No. Germany could support none of her allies at this point and was focused like a laser on breaking the Western Front before the Americans arrived. Even so, the narrow view that the introduction of US forces on the battlefield might have “tipped the scales” but didn’t contribute overwhelmingly to victory IS rather provincial and nationalistic. Of course there were still a lot more French and British troops on the front lines, but with America “all in” the Allies now had unlimited supplies and fresh troops to draw upon. They had tremendous weight behind them and the Germans had none. After the failure of their final desperate offensive–due almost entirely to a lack of this “weight,” the Germans knew they were spent. After that all they could manage was a weakening effort to secure the best terms they could get. Didn’t work so well, but this point would not have been reached for years–if at all–without direct US involvement. And it might be argued here of course that had the Allies been willing–as Pershing desired–to march all the way to Berlin, there would not have been a WW2. Everybody makes such a point of the inexperience of the US troops, but ALL troops are inexperienced when they first meet the enemy. But the professional American officer corps–and the American psyche, so soon after our own Civil War, Indian Wars, and the difficulties in the Philippines–possibly better understood the nature of TOTAL WAR and how to crush an enemy for good than anyone in Europe did.

” I doubt the Germans would’ve instantly won the war if they’d discovered it in time, but they could’ve just waltzed through the line”

You open the path for me to discuss about this significant topic. What’s interesting is that the word that you use “mutiny” is not accurate. Men remained in trenches and most of the time only rejected attack orders. To be honest, most low level officers sided with them as they came from the same social group. By this time not a single active officer was remaining at this level. Those officers were often teachers, bankers, clerks and so on. The most accurate translation and description was that they were… on strike (very French, sisn’t it?). They were not willing any more to launch futile attack but they were perfectly willing to defend their own homes. A significant number of those strikes focused on practical topics: more leaves to see their family, better cantonment and so on. What’s also surprising (even nowadays for me) is that each time Germans launched a local attack, those men defended the line as if nothing was happening.

“Pétain was content to wait for the deployment of the AEF AND the Renault tanks before he would resume”

Exact. That’s the main idea.

“But were the Allies better able to support them? Yes. Were the enemy? No”

My point is that if you check numbers you’ll see that allies (French and English) kept their units in Europe in early 1918 and haven’t been able to reinforce other fronts (Mesopotamia, Palestine, Greece, Italy) a lot as they were afraid of the temporary German domination in the West.

“but with America “all in” the Allies now had unlimited supplies and fresh troops to draw upon”

Well. On the supply front nothing really changed. For the troops, I fully agree with you. The simple fact that they were coming had a strategic effect on German’s decision to attack. Between 1914 and 1917 France and England bankrupted themselves to pay for the war, purchasing US good.

Talking about that, it leaded to some resentment too in England and Belgium (which was the main victim in 1914) as they said “welcome to the party, boys, but don’t you think that you’re a little bit late? Only 4 years”.

“Everybody makes such a point of the inexperience of the US troops, but ALL troops are inexperienced when they first meet the enemy”

I don’t think so. The problem is that high level officers were not willing to learn while at the same time men and front line officers were trying to learn as much as possible. The Belleau wood skirmish is a perfect example: the first attack was a disaster when they followed regulations but front line troops understood and adapted in less than one week. They were able to launch coordinated attacks and to borrow artillery batteries from adjacent units.

“But the professional American officer corps–and the American psyche, so soon after our own Civil War, Indian Wars, and the difficulties in the Philippines–possibly better understood the nature of TOTAL WAR and how to crush an enemy for good than anyone in Europe did”

I’m sure that Grant understood it perfectly. Same thing probably for Sherman and Sheridan. But I’m afraid that after the officer corp forgot as they never really faced a total war. In WW2, Korea, Viet-Nam and so on USA never waged a total war according to foreign standards (European of Asian) of what a “total war” is. Soviet Union did.

After, but it’s out of the topic, a partial explanation may come from the fact that the officer corp was not taking enough into consideration political consequences of their military decisions (or, more accurately, they they were not allowed to do so by US political leaders). In Viet-Nam for example they failed to consider a single question: why exactly a Budhist South Vietnamese would fight for a corrupt and christian dictator when the other side was promising a better life, land to the farmers?

I think Jack Nickolson could actually pull that off quite well. As for the rest . . . Oh Matthieu! It’s only a 3″ rifle, but that doesn’t much matter, does it? Now the 6pdr . . . zig-zag all you want. I’ll load canister. 😉 (Rifles suck with canister).

Sure, why not. Lots of people still haven’t read it and many won’t for months. Always a big up-tick around Christmas, people giving hardcovers as gifts, but I don’t see a problem if you preface your post with a spoiler warning. The only problem here is that people can see the whole thread so maybe responses to spoilers should include the warning as well? This is not me being a jerk, far from it. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody.

The crew’s thinking of cutting down Savoie‘s wrecked 340mm. Assuming this catches on with other designs, how well would a capital ship with six “sawed-off” 13.4″/35s perform against the Allies’ opponents?

got mine finally. Got a long rainy weekend to read it. Waiting to see who got the hook from “Sparky” Anderson. Since Taylor killed off so many Destroyermen in the first few books, my guess is that it’s a Lemurian, since we really haven’t identified enough Impies or RRRppers to have them wear out their welcome. Although the Lemurians took a big hit to the lineup with Adar. Anh I hope it’s not Lawrence, although Petey has definitely worn out his welcome.

As to the performance of the Savoie, I bet it has a lot less to do with the cut-down 13.4″ guns and a lot more to do with fire control, damage control, and ship-handling. Unless the League has some hidden big ship, Savoie will be at least equal.

I’ve been in my own special No Spoiler Hell. I buy these books for my brother and he loves them. I read them instantly. Beer, deck, leave me alone for a while. And then I read them again much, much slower.And then read them again before a new book comes out. Only series I’ve ever done that with, and I read constantly.

He needs to stare at them endlessly. They have to sit on his kitchen table while he drinks coffee and waits until the Earth’s magnetic field has reached exactly the resonance he requires, the wind is from the right direction and speed and his toenails are the correct length. Hopefully the phone doesn’t ring during any of that or it’s a total reset.

A Radical Intervention may be required
Eek! the Cat Season 02 Episode 05A Eekpocalypse Now

Your bro seems to be in Dire Straits warranting an all-expenses paid vacation back to “Stone Walls” Basic under the friendly guidance tutelage and supervision of an a Dennis Silva or Arnold Horn Avatar.
Your Mom will be sooo pleased!

An idea I couldn’t get out of my head is that at some point in the future Jash and his Slashers, maybe the Grik as a whole, will be allies against the League.
Stranger things have happened – Laney finally grew up.

Being blind an poor I have been delighted that YouTube now has more Science Fiction audiobooks you can listen to. Began listening to one it was from Tantor, Hmm are Taylor’s books on YouTube? Yes the first four books! Does Taylor know, I’ll ask in an E-Mail No he did not now he has to report them.

OK so why should you care? Simple reading Taylor and other author’s books are an entertainment we love, or you would not be on his author’s webpage right? For Taylor besides the enjoyment of spinning Destroyermen yarns it is a job earning money for his family, and by the way for the families of his publishers. Copyright infringement takes money from those folks, it is stealing! If those people are not paid then the entertainment we crave will not be there.

So if you see what may be copyright infringement report it to the author if you can. Charlie

Glad you noticed that Charles. Although I would be willing to pay for an audiobook, you’re getting more than just the words, you’re getting the effort of the narrator(s) as well, and they’re pros at it. I listen to a lot of audiobooks (spend a lot of time on the road) and it’s much more enjoyable than listening to some dull insurance texts. I am scrupulous about copyrights when writing forms, and I’d hope that people respect my work.

Maybe audiobooks could be Taylor’s next venture, after the graphic novels…

The adds are the way YouTube makes money to monetize the files. You want no adds, get the disk from Tantor or Audiobook from Amazon. Remember the old adage “You get what you pay for,” listen for free the people buying the adds are paying.

The best audio rendition of a book that I ever heard and will never forget
were the almost nightly bedtime performances conducted by my mom
and dad to all our family’s assembled grandma and grandpa visiting nieces
and nephews (those age discriminated and ruled not eligible to play
canasta, rummy or pinochle when the time for the ritual Bedtime Story had
arrived. Their reading of various citations from William Bennett’s Book of Virtues was an “Oscar” Madison worthy of an event to ever witness and Wildely remember!

Gatebox Labs is looking for family friendly Avatars to compete directly against the Watson, Siri, Alexa and Cortana AI’s. Along with a possible Comic book manga offshoot,A Taylor collaboration with an outfit like Gatebox Labs could lead to a cast of Destroyermen characters rousting and ruining and complicating the daily lives of all draftees and enlisted men, women, Grik and Lemurian alike. A Dennis Silva or Arnold Horn avatar is cause celebre’enough to force a running stampede to the nearest bar for Southern comfort and solace.

Mimirings
In any case, I do not think it is even necessary to remind any of you
that when it comes to Mr. Anderson’s “Destroyermen’s World” anything/everything that can happen unusually does andin many not so matter of factly” mystical or mysterious ways.
(And all with the added subtly and flare of a very pistol! or a two by four
over the head).
There are all those messy complications to Dwarf over and Gnome in on.

Gun Deck Sight Aftermath
“The navigator of the flagship is always quite pleased and satisfied with himself when the average of the noon signals confirms his own figures. When they do not he shakes his head and mutters about “those clumsy destroyer sailors” who “don’t know how to read a sextant.”
Clear The Decks by Daniel V. Gallery
Warner Books, New York- 1949

Taylor
Can “Harder” wait for your own “Charlie Two-Blankets” character to suddenly appear and give a submariner’s personalized grief and perspective to Dennis Silva his Destroyerman’s counterpart and/or rival?
So will we see an Interservice Kemosabe in your next installment?

Charles
You might want to consider making a pilgrimage and detouring to Honda Point, California as the anniversary of Des Ron 11 fast approaches.

On September 8, 1923, the biggest peacetime disaster in U.S. Navy history occurred when commodore Captain Edward Watson of Destroyer Squadron 11 (Desron 11) ignored his radio navigation device and led 9 of his 14 ships to run aground at Honda Point in the Santa Barbara Channel in California, with 7 of the Clemson-class destroyers sinking.

Des Ron 11—Delphy, S. P. Lee, Young, Woodbury, Nicholas, Fuller and Chauncey—were stranded on the California coast and lost in the US Navy’s worst-ever peacetime disaster.

(Sigh) It is. I have the same fight with them on every single cover that shows a US flag. Their attitude is “who will notice?” and I can’t get through to them that a LOT of people will. I got them to fix it on Devil’s Due because it was so prominent, but I went round and round with them so much on the RoB cover regarding so many other things–they HATE to change stuff–that I thought it was fixed. (Not only the number of stars, but the flag’s position). Nope. At least they got rid of the giant rangefinder on the fo’c’sle that was as big and prominent as a 5″ gun turret. Don’t know where they came up with that. I doubt they even knew what it was and just figured “hey! Whatever that is, it’ll look cool there!” Nope.
All this said, they do a really good job on my covers. I send them sketches, photos, descriptions, the works. Sometimes the cover looks just like an improved version of my sketch, but sometimes I get the feeling they didn’t look at half of what I sent and just made stuff up. That wouldn’t be much of a problem with almost any other series, but this really is different. Not only is there an actual historical component, but a lot of readers (like you) are sharp enough to notice when things are just flat wrong. Can you tell this is kind of a sore subject with me?

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. I noticed it at B&N, but that didn’t stop me from buying a copy. I DO have my priorities in the right order.

Getting the right flag, for some reason, is a pet peeve of mine. While it is fairly common to see a 50 star flag in a WWII setting, I have also noticed a surprising number of 48 star flags in contemporary settings. Still haven’t figured that one out. Maybe they just grab the first one on the shelf in the prop room.

Yeah, things like that really bug me. John Wayne could get away with wagging around an 1892 Winchester in the Civil War but nobody else can. Things like that have generally gotten better though, at least in the movies. They still stretch things quite a bit. I worked on a movie once in which the main character was carrying a Paterson Colt during the Texas revolution. I made a fuss and they said “what? Paterson’s were patented the same year—1836”. Yeah, but…. they didn’t get it. Oh well. Maybe the character swiped his from old Sam on his way to the patent office.
By the way! Welcome to our little forum!

The one thing i have always wondered is why did the grik ev3n have the ability to make steel plate. Untill the desrtoyer men and the amigi arrived they had to need for plate steel. Then all of a sudden they had the ability to make and work 6 or 10 inch sreel plate. They would need rolling mills and besimer furnaces capible of poaring 20 tonnes at a time. Seems unreal to me. The dirgables seem more realistic.

We know the Grik made swords, and had an iron industry in India, as to the industrial processes used Taylor has not gotten into the nitty gritty, and such detail would probably scare off readers in droves. We know from quotes the first plates presented to Kurokawa were brittle cast iron, later acceptable plate was made either Bessemer or Open earth process. Perhaps Taylor will chime in.

Right. Grik probably used more iron than ‘Cats did, at first, and India was their primary source–at first. Remember how many unfinished, unarmored ships they had for a while? And the first armor was very brittle, established many times. Their guns were, too, often bursting. Boilers and even engines were established as unsatisfactory due to workmanship and materials for a great while as well. It was also established that iron and steel production began to improve fairly rapidly due to Japanese influence. A great deal of superior plate was captured at Madras and Grik City; good enough to salvage or re-purpose at any rate. Having already gone through the process of making steel for Lemurians, a lengthy dissertation on Grik manufacture would’ve been interesting to us, but tiresome for many so I merely referred to its quality as “steadily improving” or something like that from time to time, often to the dismay of the Allies.

The quick improvement still required rolling mills which is the real question and those would require at least a year to build prototypes then another year to perfect before real good plate could be produced. You need good steel to make the rollers and good lathes to turn them. Good bearings so they turn properly.
it just seems much too soon

Just finished the new book- Got it for a steal of 5 dollars (thank heavens for coupons!) at Barnes and Noble, and have been devouring it every chance I get. As usual, twas amazing, and I felt that the battles were especially unique in how they unfolded, their location and weapons, etc. Looking forward to seeing how the new geopolitical developments will manifest in later books.

And whose this Rob fella everyone seems to be talking about? 😉

P.S. I’ve been away from the website a long time, mainly due to a chaotic year at school, but damn is it good to be back!

Unrelated to ROB I have been listening to a podcast that many of you are probably aware of, but maybe some aren’t. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History is also very interesting and I happen to have #61 (BLITZ) Painfotainment on while I am painting the kitchen. No, I am not affiliated with it in any way.

This is a very long standalone show about the history of torture, criminal punishment, methods and the (surprising) reasons behind some of it. Not done with the four hour podcast but this is a good one and I can’t help but think of the bloody Doms again and again. Worth listening to if you have the time.

I think it’s best if we all wait a tad longer—till the one month line—simply because (A) I’m pretty sure that was the original deal (B) like I said, a lot more people read these posts than actually participate. We all tend to forget that from time to time. Spoilers spilled here will go mainstream fast.

Finished my second reading and plan to read it again in a month or so. Taylor did a fine job as usual. Wish that Certain persons had not been killed off but It will clean up the plot in regards to others.
Wish I had time to do another raid of east Texas.

Fun fact: to me it sounds a lot like what you know as “français tirailleur” but the US translation of “petit nègre” into français tirailleur” is also faulty. The litteral translation is “little negro” (there is no pejorative content in French).

Talking about your books: i noticed that the cover was not actually the “real” one but a printed paper over the cover. It’s very strange for me as I’m used to “real” printed covers. Such books are here really old fashioned.

Do you know if there is a specific reason for that or if it’s a US custom?

Ahhh, no. Whenever I change something in the specs section, the CEs always go “but that’s not what it was before!” and freak out, usually resetting to whatever default THEY last worked on–and when the CEs change from one book to the next . . . Sometimes makes me wonder why I try so hard. As usual. we need to start a list. As for the new 5.5″ DPs, they are actually new, mounts and everything. They’d been making liners for Amagi’s 5.5″s and that was the rationale for sticking with that diameter as opposed to changing over to a 6″ or something. At the same time, as bag guns, they still won’t be great AA weapons, but they do have that capability.

Yeah. (I’ll ask Charles not to re-post this on the Association page because if the vast majority of readers haven’t noticed the errors cited here, there’s no point in drawing them to their attention–yet–but I’ll try to explain how some of those errors tend to get “carried along,” or why some may even seem incomprehensible).

I’ve had a few really good copy editors, but also some that may have been technically “good,” but also overly intrusive, trying to either “fix” things to conform with the MW Dictionary, or with a previous style sheet that has been compiled. The problem is, a lot of terms I use are either highly specialized, antiquated, or just made up and don’t appear in the dictionary they reference. And since the tech in the story and the spec sheet evolves, the style sheet needs to be updated from book to book. Sometimes it apparently hasn’t been, or they may have referenced a style sheet for a much earlier book. When they send the CE manuscript back to me, I spend more time restoring things they changed (particularly dialog!)than I do actually rewriting things. This can be very tedious because I have to write little justifications for why they need to leave things alone. Ultimately, they will send me the page proofs and I have to go through the process again, after they have either incorporated or rejected the repairs I made. The problem then is that none of the previous exchanges are highlighted and not only am I unable to confirm the changes, but I’m only able to make small corrections at that point because I barely have enough time to read it, much less perform further editing, and THAT is the version that goes out with the ARC. It’s also the last time I see the manuscript before the book comes out and I never know whether they incorporate or reject the last round of suggestions.
I’m not whining. My books are not unique in this and most authors surely go through a similar process, but the myriad “voices” and certain technical aspects in this series do present unusual challenges for CEs and I do sympathize with them. Think about it: there probably aren’t that many series’ out there with so much real and made up spec detail–or readers who will actually catch inconsistencies or inaccuracies. On the other hand, I wouldn’t write things in the books if I wasn’t pretty dang sure they were right, and when they change those things, it reflects badly on me and MY research. I am sympathetic, but it is very frustrating at times.
Anyway, that’s how things change back and forth, particularly in the spec sheet. My very first reference to Leopardo might have actually called her an “esploratori class,” though I doubt it. Chances are, they rejected the caps on “Leone” and rearranged it to emphasize the unusual “esploratori” word. This probably got in the style sheet and they’ve defaulted to it ever since no matter what I write. They think this aids continuity, but it only perpetuates errors on their part or mine.

“The problem is, a lot of terms I use are either highly specialized, antiquated, or just made up and don’t appear in the dictionary they reference”

I noticed. Sometimes I just say “ok, that should be a thingy that you put in a contraption to activate a gadget and the thingumabob works”. That’s especially the case for nautical related words as sometimes I don’t even know their name in French. Sometimes it’s quite funny:ok… joggle…. Definition: a slender triangular recess cut into the faying surface of a frame or steamed timber to fit over the land of clinker planking, or cut into the faying edge of a plank or rebate to avoid feather ends on a strake of planking. WTF? Translation: embrever… WTF again?

“The problem then is that none of the previous exchanges are highlighted”

Honestly, given the current editing software on the market, IMHO this is highly unprofessional of them. You deserve a better editing method (such as an automatic “version comparing tool”).

We know that you’re research is really excellent and that you wrote exactly what you wanted to say.

Been awhile, but I just finished the new book, thank God for Kindle and the internet. Read it here on Crete in the sunshine on holiday. As usual Taylor it is excellent, unputdownable. Now have to read it again more slowly to pick up on all the implications. As always you leave us needing to wait another year for the next instalment. Keep up the good work, and try not to make it too hard for the Walkers, they deserve some breaks after all this surely.
Allan

ROB has finally arrived courtesy of USPS logistics (Hip! Hip! Hooray!!-YAHOO!!!).
I will unfortunately have to defer and delay and postpone my scheduled appointment with Mr. J. Daniels and ROB and temporarily tempt those finicky Book of Fates.
Due to some awfully suspicious, coincidental and unanticipated bad timing, answering ROB’S Ahab’s like specter and siren call will have to wait TFN until after Ihave finished tracking and following the riveting exploits and adventures of Machinist Mate “Charlie Two Blankets” (Silva’s Rival?) by completing a reading of Harry Homewood’s “Silent Sea” and “O God of Battles”.
Lots of excellent reading to look forward too!

Just got back from a safari to my local bookstore. I was going to get the latest Larry Correia & John Ringo book Saints. Of course they’d only gotten one & it was gone. Amazon, here I come, BUT the A’s were just to my left & I caught a glimpse of something with “Bones” on it. One double take later & I had ROB in my sweaty claws & shuffled nonchalantly to the cash register, where they didn’t bat an eye & here I am ready to read & spoil ten days early. I don’t know if someone at corporate read 13 as 03, but Books-A-Million might still have them on sale, if you’re quick.

Well, Lou, spare the rest of us. To my knowledge, have not gotten anything from Hamazon, although both FedEx and UPS have lately been unable to find my house. Too bad there is not an option for using the USPS; although I have regularly had issues with them, they at least are able to find, and deliver to, a PO box. Funny, FedEx regularly delivers to the Post Office, but guess they are unable to make the connection to the PO box inside. Maybe Amazon should buy the USPS.

I got curious when discussing subs elsewhere. It was brought up that the Surcouf type & the German U-boat had been presumably operating in the Mediterranean & possibly the Atlantic since 1939. What did they do to keep from getting eaten by mountain fish? They weren’t using active pinging in the Indian Ocean. I could see the MF staying out of the Med, but were they in the Atlantic? Or are they a Pacific only species?

Storm Surge near end of Chapter 26 page 302 Captain Anson, “We believe they [the Mountain Fish females and young] gather here [El Passo de Fuego] with their young, on both sides of the strait after giving birth somewhere else.” So does “both sides of the strait” mean north and south or west and east? Perhaps Taylor will answer he mentioned in a call today that he might be away from the computer for a couple of days.

Been reading up on European African colonies pre- and during WW1, Between Germany and France, They had most of north and west Africa. Don’t know how WWI turned out in the CES world, but my guess is that the Americans didn’t get the Germans to turn over all their colonies. And so in a roundaabout answer, my guess is that the Surcouf and the U boat were reaching out to overseas colonies, when the transfer came along. Maybe the Uboat is dinner?

Well, within 30 days to ROB. Waiting to see if FedEx pitches this on the lawn like he does Chewy boxes. Broke down and had to find another series to occupy the time, got started on Jack Reacher. Kind of violent, perhaps a relation to Silva.

I’ve been watching a woodchuck that lives under my barn. Now I have four of them. I must be getting mellow with age because there was a time when that would have been the first and last sighting of them. I told my wife (city girl – everything out there is a beaver to her) that they were cute little “vegetitians” and that they are pests – “sometimes some things just need killing”

On top of the groundhog. Was at the store the other day buying subsonic .22LR to annoy my groundhogs with and got a ration of shirt from multi-earringed clerk; what was I buying it for, did I have ID to go with my credit card, etc. Told him I was going to sit on top of my garage and shoot passersby. That shut him up. Waiting for a visit from the State Police Action Squad (or whatever they call themselves). Guess I’d better hide my old bolt-action Iver Johnson in case they want to seize it as being a danger to the community,

I see my woodchuck thread gained a little traction since I checked last. My normal remedy is doled out 40 grains at a time and I’ve found CCI standard velocity to be effective. Tried a different approach.

I came so close to nailing one of them with a potato cannon they now give the house a sufficiently wide birth. This is what they get for screwing with a man with too much time on his hands.

I live next to two churches (OK, on the other side is a cemetery, so maybe that balances things off) and a state road in the back, so unless I’m shooting straight down into the ground, it’s dangerous. Shooting through a plastic bottle doesn’t keep the noise down either. They know enough to stay out of range of air gun. Havahart works once in a while but I usually get rabbits or squirrels. Everyone gets a ride to the transfer station. No, I don’t stop at river crossings, no fish big enough to eat them.

Well, it’s that time of year again. We hand in our school computers tomorrow, so I’m afraid I won’t be on much, if at all, until sometime around the start of September. It’s been a heck of a year, and I hope to have a great time with all of you next year. Until then, I bid you all adieu.

Continued:
A Destroyerman’s Treatise and post graduate seminar on Blue and Brown Water Humor
No expletive deletions, no swear jar penalties, just the leading edge, the tasteful and the funny!
Showing all knock off imitators how it’s done
Laughter rest assured.

2 From Final Harbor
Harry Homewood
McGraw Hill Book Company
New York, New York 1980

“In view of the fact that both the Japanese officers were known to be experts in
Jungle warfare and inasmuch as the US Navy’s Marine Corps is now engaged in a
bitter battle to hold on to Guadalcanal, it has been officially decided that the, ah the mining of the bath house was a heavy loss to the enemy and Mako is hereby
Given credit for sinking one, ah Japanese bath house!”……

“Then he ran out of the building, it was built up on stilts like so many desert buildings, and went under the building and jumped into the cesspool that the building’s toilets emptied into!” ” He stayed there all that night and the next day and then he climbed out the following night and walked out into the desert to a prearranged place and was picked up by a light plane.” “I’m told that the plane’s pilot put in for a Hardship Discharge, saying the Major’s stench had ruined his nose and eyes for life!” …

Was looking at the cover of ROB & got to thinking. The “crocodile” on the cover may actually be one of the amphibious Grik-type Great Mothers. She may have come out of one of the side lagoons/swamp areas to see what all the fuss was about & stuck around to snack on some Grik galleys.

Headed off to Tractor Supply for parts for the beast, and thought; zep engines– low speed– farmland– someone needs to invent the tractor, and put the brontosarry era in the past. Austral, the NUS heartland (they probably have horses too), and maybe even Halikstan could use some tractors (since the Griks would probably eat the horses, as Plains Indians sometimes did). Air-cooled, so they’d operate winter or summer.

Sorry, guys, subject of tanks and battleships is getting a bit old. Thinking of more realistic steps in evolution. Mechanized farming frees up labor, and unless Alexey can figure up a relative of Igor Sikorsky that can have been transferred from Czarist Russia, don’t think you want to hear about my helicopter idea…

Looking at my 1963 Nat Geo Atlas, and realized that Cabinda is a straight shot over to Zanzibar. Wonder if the Grik, now that they have zeps, thought of going that way? Also a shorter flight for Fiedler and Tante Ju.

More ‘What if’ bad timing events for your consideration
Suppose on its first War Patrol USS Nautilis (Narwhal-class submarine SS 168)
at Midway was not depth charged by IJN Arashi after its failed torp attack on
IJN BB Kirishima and the IJN cruiser Nagara
Suppose also that the Rosetta Stone- the one deciphering two languages;
Egyptian and Greek and three writing systems; hieroglyphic, demotic, and
Greek had not been discovered by French scientists and its military during
the Napoleonic War in 1799.

2 Star Carrier 1 Earth Strike
Ian Douglas
Eos Harper Collins 2010
A passage:
“Gray had released the The Dustcatcher, sending a microscopic
speck of collected dust and hydrogen atoms compressed into
a neutron micro-body hurtling ahead at half the speed of light.
If it, by sheer, random chance, hit an enemy spacecraft as it zipped
Through the system, so much the better, but there was no way to aim it.
Like the vaporized whiffs of any A7 (StarHawk) strike packages that had
missed their targets, the dust balls released by the infallible fighters
would remain Intersteller navigation hazards for eons to come.”…

3 “…riding the endless waves of the past, bound for
mysterious ports (that) they will never make, on
voyages from which they never will return.”…
Excerpt Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes
Dwight Boyer
Dodd Mead & Company New York

Phantom Ships that pass in the night
Lyle A Myers

Shimmering ripples on the lakes below
The full moon’s eerie silver glow
In the stillness of the summer night
Reveal weird shadows in translucent light.

Strange forms take shape, tall masts and spars
Like fairy wands, touch the twinkling stars,
Then through the magic of mind and sight
We see the Phantom Ships that pass in the night

Unfolding the mysteries of long, long ago
Lost vessels and crews lying deep down below
Return as ghosts and sail on once more
Toward that beacon light on the distant shore.

The Master of all ships is now in command
The course is charted to that promised land;
Not a sound breaks the silence in the pale moonlight
On those Phantom ships that pass in the night

Re: Rail Gun tech definitely an Energy hog which complicates development and
usefulness.
A Cautionary Note:
Futuremore-When you live and are addicted by the circuit board you become only
far too dependent and are enthralled and enslaved by its alluring and questionable reliability and promise.

against sailing vessels those tarts mentioned a few weeks ago would be real good with a few mods.
1 add a contact primer for a flexible payload. I drop and 10 to 50 inflamble darts are suddenly starting fires all over the ship
2. modified head and sails get ripped up and or set on fire.

Sounds Bodkins everyone!
Let’ bring out of French mothballs
the cold war era infra sound cannons
and reintroduce employ/deploy them back
into all superpower weapons inventories.
Talk about an everlasting Silent Spring, Summer, Fall And Winter!!

It’s interesting how fast things change. I was looking through copies of Fahey’s Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 1939 & 1959 editions. The first started with battleships, the latter with aircraft carriers. In 39, we had 15 built & 8 building battleships. In 59 we had 10. We had seven carriers in 39, in 59, we had FIFTY NINE! Amazingly in only 20 years the rolls had changed. BB’s were the heavy hitters, now the CV’s had that job.

Paul
An even better resource for you to examine is
the Bluejacket manuals for the years as an
additional aid in a reexamination of the military
culture as it evolved and has changed in the
pre/post and cold war eras.

That’s just human nature (mixed with a bit of rock-paper-scissors); once the first one does well, suddenly there’s a race to get in on the action. Same thing with trains, planes, radios, radar, tanks, smartphones and 3D movies.

We’re probably going to see another military one soon. Once the Navy’s coilgun is powered and functional, everybody’s going to go from “the battleship is dead” to “we need one too!”

I don’t know that I believe everything that comes out of China or that is reported about China. The US Military has a tendency to inflate rumors and stories about the capability of potential opponents, especially at budget times. Every congressman was a nice juicy DOD project for his district. Right now China is the #1 monster under the bed to wave at budget committees.

Everyone seems to be close to one, but they never seem to get past the testing stage. For that matter you can build one yourself, given the time & know how. A military grade gun takes a hell of a lot of instantaneous energy to power one for starters. It looks like barrel liner changes would be frequent (& costly). Tracking & targeting a moving object at the long ranges touted by the proponents is a bitch (think Strategic Defense Initiative) & I think may be the sticking point for those developing one. Putting something like that into say a Zumwalt class will probably cost as much as the DD itself & any little twitch & it’s off-line. Militaries like robust, reliable systems as well as the shiny & new.

I think there is a parallel with the pneumatic dynamite gun of the late 19th century. Given the aerodynamic drag on a Mach 7 projectile in the lower atmosphere and the lack of an explosive payload; the rail (coil, Gauss, take your pick)gun doesn’t make sense as a general purpose bombardment weapon. What it does make sense as is an anti-ballistic missile or anti-aircraft weapon. Not only is the weapon itself large, but the supporting equipment, id est generators, cap banks etc. are large and fragile. A cluster bomb or proximity fused artillery will put the land based system out of service quickly. It’s a better fit on a ship, but you pretty much have to build the ship around it and the power plant for the gun is as big as the one to drive the ship. It has its uses but they are limited ones.

// It looks like barrel liner changes would be frequent (& costly).//
A properly designed rail gun needs and has no liners. the projectile is repelled by the barrel inherently. any liner would need to me nonmetallic and non-conductive lest it interfere with the projecting fields. any gun that allows the projectile to contact the barrel has design flaws

I should have said rail replacement. Yes they have no barrel liner, but the projectile or sabot for the projectile is in contact with the rails providing a path for the electricity to accelerate the round. A good part of the massive “muzzle blast” is micro debris from that contact being heated to plasma by the massive current discharge. Consider what an arc welder does to it’s electrode & then jack that up to the power levels used in current proto type weapons. Check out “Heat Dissipation” in the link.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun#Materials_used

The one that i built had a muzzle velocity of 500 fps and was completly non contact other than the switch closure and i modified that to an scr as soon as i could get one big enough. I used a copper ring projectile around an iron rod. This was about 40 years ago

I’m still thinking the electrical arc between the rails & your projectile would be eating micro layers off the rails at every shot. Not really noticeable at low power. Jack the power levels up significantly & things start to get interesting. With a non-contact projectile, I’d think the rail on the cathode side would be transferring material to the projectile on every shot & on the anode side the projectile would be plating the rail on that side.

On the 1I built there was no contact between the projectile and the barrel rod basically you Magnetize the rod with a large magnetic pulse and the ring is sucks down the rod being magnetized as it goes and repellin it from the rod so it is not contacted. It wasn’t made the same way as the present ones are being done. It was a modification of the magnetic levitation trick but about 500 volts and .25 fared cap being dumped into the coil to energise 1 pulse. It worhed and i was happy with results. Yes not as sophisticated as the modern ones but it worked.

My first intro to Gallery came via a bargain bin money raising event
that was being held for the local public library. A yellowing well worn
and read paperback edition and copy of Cap’n Fatso greatly helped in
the further development and refinement of my own unusual and verry
peculiar and Different Drummer type Sense of Humor.
(A Definitely Non-Traditional One “Dat’s Fer Sure!).

Talk about some really Bad Timing for someone.
The Carrier Enterprise was also weather delayed and a day late in it’s
own arrival and return back into Pearl Harbor.
So, what if Enterprise was also caught berthed and anchored at
Pearl Harbor as was originally scheduled and intended on the morning of
December 7, 1941.
Or the IJN Submarine picket line blocking MIDWAY Passages & Approaches in
June of 1942 was established.
How might, or would have history changed for the better or the worse?
FYI – Check out Taylor’s archives for various other related Postings on this topic/scenario.

“Because sometimes there aren’t any good choices.”
“Sometimes you have to choose between something
(Really!?) bad, and something worse.”-
A citation from The Seventh Angel, Jeff Edwards
Stealth Books

The collected writings of the author Wes Oleszewski should also help entertain,
motivate and captivate you in this awkward period of time that’s in prelude to ROB.

With their naval losses to date & presumed facilities in the Caribbean & possibly Atlantic, the Doms may be brewing a “surprise” for the allies, if/when they attempt the Pass of Fire. If I was them, I’d be pulling in my remaining steam liners & frigates & cutting them down a deck or three, & armoring them. The LOT may have even passed the idea on from Kurokawa & the Grik. It would be a nasty shock for the largely unarmored eastern fleet.

I’d worry about the LOT giving them an old ship or two; perhaps that’s what the Spanish destroyer was to be destined to go. One iron ship in the Pass, or worse still, a midnight raid on the carriers. Add a couple of crated CR 42’s or similar planes, and the Fleet would be toast. It’s all about controlling the choke points.

Enemy surface vessels could be solved by having Savoie/Gray spearhead the charge – should be able to make scrap out of anything short of another battleship or cruiser.

As for CR.42s or other biplanes, I don’t see 400-ish lbs of bombs per plane hurting the Allied fleet very much, even at night with all the lights on. Now if the League brass has been convinced to hand over a couple of SM.79s and pilots, they might be in trouble.

True, but the Savoie is damaged & currently unavailable, the Grey isn’t in commission yet & the other steel DDs are dedicated to the Zambesi campaign.

Don’t sell a 220 lb. bomb sort. It’s only slightly smaller than an 8″ HE shell & bigger than a 6″ AP shell. Dropped from a thousand feet or more, it will hose any of the steam frigates & DDs & damage or cripple the carriers, which are basically large, slow, wooden, gasoline & bomb dumps. Granted, a bigger bomb equals a bigger boom, but a small bomb will do just fine against what the eastern fleet has. Even a steel DD or the Grey would be vulnerable, the Savoie, not so much.

//Enemy surface vessels could be solved by having Savoie/Gray spearhead the charge – should be able to make scrap out of anything short of another battleship or cruiser.//

Gray is a bit too light for that – her role would probably better be to lead the destroyers – but yes, “Savoie” could took out anything short of another battleship. Despite being old, she is superdreadnought – capable of dealing & surviving heavy damage.

// I don’t see 400-ish lbs of bombs per plane hurting the Allied fleet very much, even at night with all the lights on. //

It would be enough to kill any destroyer, over-kill any Alliance wooden frigate, and several hits would destroy the Alliance carrier easily. Let’s not forget; the Alliance carriers are WOODEN-HULLED, they have no armor, and wood is notoriously vunerable to shockwaves. Recall what happened with Kurokawa’s carriers when Union P-40 counterattacked; the League strike against Union carriers would have the same effect.

against sailing vessels those tarts mentioned a few weeks ago would be real good with a few mods.
1 add a contact primer for a flexible payload. I drop and 10 to 50 inflamble darts are suddenly starting fires all over the ship
2. modified head and sails get ripped up and or set on fire.

Tarts are always good with a few mods & drinks! Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Actually, not a bad idea, except I’d go with maybe a 5 lb. bomblet dart with a small bursting charge to scatter the incendiary. They could be carried on internal rails & lever drop a rail (or 2) of bomblets on each pass. 8 rails of 20 bomblets would be a decent payload.

They might also try to mimic and imitate
British tactics used against the Ruhr Dams.
Another Volcanic ashes to ashes monumental display
and tempest in a Britsh teapot (Dome?)!
aka & Reference-The Dambusters

Except that both the Aswan High Dam AND Low Dam are halfway to Sudan. I doubt the League’d be willing to go through all that effort (and possible Grik attacks) just for electricity/irrigation/river calming.

Guys, please! You overestimated the League capabilities GREATLY! They were around since just 1939-1940 – i.e. 5-6 years at most! And unless they came with the industrial & population power of an industrialized nation – and in that case they would already took over the whole world! – there is no way they could have resources for such large-scale building projects.

Aswan Dam complex was build by the nation with a population of 25 millions with a lot of technical & industrial help from the USSR – the second most-capable industrial power in the world at this time. The League clearly have neither the dozens of millions of population, nor any help from industrial powers (due to the lack of such in Destroyermen’s world).

They clearly have established SOME infrastructure by now – at least basic fuel & materials producing and manufacturing – but they simply have neither time nor industrial capabilities to attempt any large-scale projects. As well as they have no particular need to build a Suez channel or dam the Nile. For what reason they may need something like that?

Considering that there is still Ice Age in Destroyermen’s world – the whole North Africa is a millions of square miles of excellent farmlands. There are no Sakhara desert; instead there are wide steppe and forests, a lot of small rivers & lakes.

Considering that, Alexey, it’d be interesting to find out if there are any civilizations in West Africa. With bountiful farmlands, oil and mineral reserves (remember the LOT is probably full of knowledge of African resources, given their European colonial heritage, from Spanish Morroco to Namibia), that would be a prime expansion area for the LOT. Any Lemurians that had managed to bypass “The Dark” would have been discovered by the RRP. So, my guess is that whoever’s been there has been a longer evolution. Remember the LOT’s meeting Kurokowa’s Griks? Not a lot of surprise, so they’ve encourntered them somewhere else… perhaps in West Africa? Grik maps had those enigmatic ‘here be Griks’ marks on the West Coast of Africa.

I would find it hard to believe that there could be any kind of civilization anywhere in or near equatorial Africa that had not been found and destroyed by the Grik. the only reason the south Africans exist is because the weather there is too cold for the Grik. They would be in Egypt but for the Sahara and Nile flooding.

That being said, guys, lets also remember that the ‘grik-like’ is one of the dominant evolutionary forms; the Lemurians are the other one discovered to date. Don’s right, the Griks are opportunistic destroyers of any other life forms they find, but what’s in central Africa, the radik-something, seems to eat Griks. What’s on the west African coast could be one, or the other.. or something entirely new. Humans only transfer to DW; none seem to have evolved, probably because intially they all came from southern Africa and have probably fallen victim to Griks’ ‘All You Can Eat’ buffet. We’ll just have to wait for what comes next. Will the Griks retreat into the continent? Will General Pete and Reddy have Halik flown down to Soffesshk to incite a revolt?

June is a month widely known for all-nighter cram sessions, white papers, final exams and all the fast food, cold pizza, and black coffee that goes with the upset stomachs and all of the High Anxiety psychoticly acquired over Graduation, GPA’s and one’s final attainment of first time unemployment status in a Capitalist Meritocracy.

You Destroyermen Graduates:
With the likely publication of Mr. Anderson’s ROB now less than one month away; I can think of no better way to spend the time remaining than to adequately prepare and reacquaint oneself for the likely coming and evolving WW I&II Submarine and ASW warfare tactics and strategies that will be developed, conducted and eventually em/de ployed.

The most authoritive reference material and first-hand accounts that I know of that tries to address both sides of this complex topic are to be found in the writings of Daniel V. Gallery.
Especially informative, entertaining and instructive are his notable books:
Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea
A veritable primer on WW-2 Submarine and ASW operations and tactics
The Pueblo Incident
The Brink
Away Boarders
Stand BY-Y-Y to Start Engines
Now Hear This
Eight Bell’s and All’s Well
Clear the Decks
Cap’n Fatso
Worthwhile and Worthy reads all

FYI Taylor//
Isn’t Dennis Silva’s unusual Darwinian sense of humor similarly DNA/RNA based or related?
And will the next insertion into The Destroyermen Saga likely see a flotilla of lost/missing Lodner D. Phillips US Civil War Marine Cigar submarines entering the Mediterranean Fray?

another good read that I just finished is All the Gallant Men by Donald Stratton, one of the men assigned to Arizona’s port-side AA director.

I learned some interesting things about Arizona from the book, including the fact that she wasn’t even supposed to be at Pearl on the 7th. She should have been at Naval Station Bremerton, but she collided with Oklahoma on maneuvers so she needed repairs that necessitated her staying at Pearl.

The USS Enterprise was due the day before, but was delayed by storms. She would have been a prime target & with little armor, full of fuel, torpedoes & bombs probably wouldn’t even be worth salvaging, much less wind up the most decorated ship of the war for the USN. A Divine Wind indeed.